Transcript of the above video: 

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing land transfer here in Thailand specifically for foreign nationals. As we have discussed in many other videos, foreign nationals are not able to own land so why are you saying it "Land Transfer". We'll call it "property transfer, Real Estate transfer" and in a sense, there's a land element, I'll get into that in a minute. But yeah, foreigners are not allowed to own land here in Thailand; that's a major restriction to Thai nationals only. I've discussed that in many other videos. There are very, very discreet exceptions to that but as we've discussed, effectively they are a no-go for most foreign nationals. I mean the Minister of Interior themself has to sign off on a land transfer that would allow a foreign national to own land in Thailand. Effectively, it's just not going to happen for the average person looking to purchase property here in Thailand. 

That said, condominiums are an option for foreign nationals here in Thailand. As we have discussed in many other videos, the Thai Condominium Act notwithstanding the restriction of foreign land ownership, does allow foreigners to take freehold title or what we call in the American Common Law tradition, Fee Simple Absolute Title or what's called in Thailand, Chanote Title; it's in your name; you have the title; you have the title deed. That can be done on condos. Now that said, there's discussion now about new taxes for foreigners associated with condos. I thought of making this video after reading a recent article from Khao Sod English, that's khaosodenglish.com. Expert Urges Government to Raise Tax for Foreign Condo Buyers. Quoting further: "He proposed four types of property taxes on foreigners based on market transaction prices (rather than government-assessed values) to raise revenue to boost the economy and increase funds for national development." 

Well one, look raising revenue in terms of taxes does not "boost the economy". It's this constant refrain by these sort of Keynesianesque bureaucrats, and they are probably not even Keynesian, they are just bureaucrats, and in their mind bureaucracy is the economy I guess, but let's be candid here, taxation does not boost anything economically, it's a drain. Quoting further: "Purchase tax or transfer tax: levied at the Land Department on transactions, with the rate of 10 - 20 percent, or 100,000 to 200,000 baht per million baht." Yeah, that's a substantial increase from the couple of percentage points that you're maybe going to be dealing with in terms of transfer, in terms of condos here in Thailand. I could think of a million ways why this probably isn't the best idea; increasing taxes rarely is in a long term sense. Again bureaucrats and government workers always say "well no this is great!" Well they're not operating in the real economy.

One big thing I could see is it if transfer taxes on condos for foreigners is increased substantially, people just won't buy, and then you get nothing. This is the problem with these kind of tax increases. You start off saying, "oh, I'm going to get all this money." Well what's a larger percentage of zero? It's still zero. So again, I can see the arguments in favour of maybe some kind of tweaking of tax rules, especially regarding foreigners here in Thailand, and I can understand how it's politically expedient here in Thailand. But that said, look at the end of the day that you need to be very, very careful with this kind of thing because the unintended consequences could frankly put the country and those who are seeking to get more tax money, put them in a worse position than they quite frankly are now.